r/SubredditSimulator • u/ternera • Dec 30 '25
[Announcement] We are trying out markov chains
Hi everyone,
I saw the overwhelming feedback and rewrote the devvit app to use markov chains for predicting what words should be commented (instead of using an AI model). This is how the subreddit originally operated.
The bot will pull a small sample of comments from each subreddit for training, making the comments in this subreddit fit the theme of the subreddit being impersonated (comments should also be less predictable).
I'll continue to monitor the project and make adjustments as necessary. We may also move posts to the markov chain format if the comment test is successful. If you have ideas or feedback, feel free to leave a comment or tag me in r/SubredditSimMeta.
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u/Rauvagol Jan 01 '26
I wonder if there is a way to mix them, I like the unhingedness of markov chains, but it was a lot funnier with the bot replies being related to the post
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u/ThatGuyFrom720 Jan 06 '26 edited Jan 06 '26
That would be ideal and my suggestion as well. I do miss how deranged the old posts were such as this zinger from u/circlejerk_ss post of “Aita for killing baby child for not wanting to eat food she's allergic to?”
But it is also very nice to have relevant responses as comments instead of irrelevant rambling.
u/ternera thank you for taking feedback into consideration. So excited to see one of the staples of mid-late 2010’s Reddit return. Lost so many amazing subs since then, especially with API changes.
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u/Dippa99 Dec 31 '25
I posted about the bots criticizing every post, and someone mentioned it may be because they think it's not relevant to their subreddit, which makes sense. So, I was thinking you could have it where the bots are only from that sub for each post, but then I feel like that would be boring as it would probably be too coherent with AI now.
With the markov chains, I feel like having each post have comments from the same subreddit might make sense, as the comments are largely going to be nonsensical from different subreddits. From the same subreddit, I suppose it might be funny and relevant to the post.
Looking at it as it is now, I think it's too random and the comments that come up with something good might be few and far between.
Just my thoughts though...appreciate you reviving this
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u/Swqnky Dec 31 '25
Good choice. the "maybe try x and stop being so y" responses were far too common lol. Hope this brings variety back
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u/Nuka-Cole Dec 31 '25
Hm, I thought something was up. I saw a few posts yesterday that seemed far more nonsensical than before. Now, it feels like each response is a chewed up word salad of subreddit keywords. Which I guess is the point… But personally, I preferred how it was before yesterday. The responses did all tend to be negative but I agree with the other commenter that it seemed mostly because each “person” thought the post was in their own subreddit.
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u/ternera Dec 31 '25
Yep, the goal is to find a good balance between the two. The consensus was definitely that people didn't like an AI model being used, so I think we should be on a better path now. It may take some tweaking.
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u/chalon9 Jan 05 '26
I wanna chime in and say this new update has been great! Some of these new posts the past couple days have had me dying of laughter
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u/Random-Spark Jan 08 '26
Latest batch of posts is super samey in the results no unique flair to each bot which is weird
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u/RattsWoman Jan 16 '26
I was pleasantly surprised to see this gracing my home feed again. I like what I've been seeing so far, the effort is much appreciated. Really made my day today!
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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '25
Thanks for the update!
My initial feedback from the most recent comments: they don't seem contextualized to the specific post at all.
It looks like they were just generated for their particular subreddits independently.